Amputee uses prosthetics, memoir to help others heal

April 27, 2012|By Nicole Brochu, Staff writer

Kevin Garrison lost his right foot to cancer in 1971, at a time when there were no amputee support programs or doctor referrals for psychological counseling. At 17 years old, the one-time athlete was left to wrestle with the loss and emotional wreckage alone.

Two years later, he found a diversion that helped him heal: creating prosthetics like the artificial foot that allowed him to walk again. First as an apprentice at a plastics company, and later as a trained, certified prosthetist, Garrison had found his calling.

For the more than three decades since, the owner of North Miami Beach-based Garrison's Prosthetic Services Inc. has been helping amputees like himself get whole again, at least physically. Now, he's offering a contribution he hopes will help them, and those who love them, emotionally and psychologically, too.

In a new memoir, "It's Just a Matter of Balance — You Can't Put a Straight Leg on a Crooked Man" (iUniverse, $22.95), Garrison recounts not just the "anger, intense sadness and depression" he experienced when losing his foot but his lack of understanding about how those emotions were affecting him.

"I had never dealt with what happened to me," said Garrison, 58, of Weston. "When I was able to accept it and deal with it, I felt like I had more room in my mind where the anger used to be."

With a foreword written by Bruce "Mac" McClellan, the president-elect of the American Academy of Orthotists & Prosthetists, the memoir aims to "deepen the understanding of what goes on in the mind of someone who suffers a permanent disability," said Garrison, who received his prosthetics training at the University of California-Los Angeles and Northwestern University.

There's little question he has a bird's-eye view of the experience, not just as an amputee but as someone who tends to those who suffer the most traumatic emotional scars. Garrison's company is one of several contracted with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Healthcare System in Miami to provide prosthetic care to veterans with service-related injuries, and he participates in free clinics that counsel veterans on overcoming limb loss.

He has also signed up with the Medical Teams International to travel to Haiti to offer support and education to earthquake victims who suffered similar injuries.

"This happened to me when I was 17. I had no psychological help," Garrison says. With "It's Just a Matter of Balance," he hopes to spread the message of how healing that help can be.